This monograph is a comparative study of the rise of early modern trading companies and their subsequent fall in the modern era. Drawing inspiration from Philip Sterns’ The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (New York, 2012), Philips and Sharman focus on the “hybrid” nature of these company-states as both economic enterprises and sovereign authorities. Much of the book focuses on the companies’ monopoly on the use of violence in the territories under their control, evoking the arguments presented in Charles Tilly’s Politics of Social Violence (New York, 2003). With its pronounced interest on the military operations of these companies, the study situates the company-state as an essential part of the rise of the fiscal-military state, extending this European institution as a global operation.
The authors acknowledge that company profits were the motive force of the institutions’ success. The appeal of the...